Writing for Communication with the Public

Abstract

Doctors and journalists traditionally regard one another with mutual distrust. In my experience as a physician covering medicine for the Washington Post, and more recently as the author of a health column for Cosmopolitan Magazine, I have been amply exposed to the grudges and prejudices each profession holds toward the other. Physicians frequently get the chance to observe the spats and reconciliations in this rocky relationship, when members of one camp or the other hold forth on the editorial pages of medical journals.